Too Sick to Go to Picnic

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Friday, July 28, 1911:I woke up this morning with a very sick feeling, and do not feel very extra now. I do not experience such feelings very often being such a good and healthy girl. Anyway it was a good thing I guess that I hadn’t intended to go to that picnic. I ate a pinch for breakfast and nothing for supper.

A hundred years ago today Grandma sat in this house while her sister was at a picnic.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It seems like the picnic was a major social event—yet Grandma didn’t go. On the 26th she wrote that she wasn’t going because something had intervened; and on the 27th she again mentioned that she didn’t think that she’d go to the picnic, but that her sister Ruth was going.

On the previous two days I’ve pondered various possible reasons why she decided not to go—maybe she was grounded . . . or maybe she was jealous that a guy she liked was going with another girl . . . or . . .

We’ll never know why Grandma decided not to go—but the bottom line was that she didn’t feel well on the day of the picnic.

I wonder if Grandma was really sick a hundred years ago today—or if she just made herself ill because she somehow managed to get herself very upset about the picnic.